End of an era

The day has come to say good-bye to some faithful companions. They've been in every kitchen since the time when "cooking" meant pouring milk over my cereal in the morning. Making them may even have been my first semi-fibery project, but thirty years later, I have to admit that my favorite potholders are done for.

So I dig out the potholder "loom" kit from the bottom of the craft closet this afternoon and make up some new ones. It was 'way more fun when I was 9 or 10, by the way. I don't remember the loops jumping off on their own volition, nor do I remember having a hard time finding loops that would actually stretch enough to fit the loom. Maybe those are all the things parents handle...

Anyway, I now have a new pair, all bright and shiny and unscathed. I've been afraid to wash the old ones for a few years now, they were getting that fragile. I figured they were getting heat sterilized with use anyway. (Germophobes, I really don't want to hear about it.)

Or am I perhaps carrying sentimentality just a wee bit too far?

Socks, socks and more socks

Here are the latest ones:
From left to right, they are Waving Lace Socks (Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Rosehip) and Diagonal Cross-Rib Socks (Dream In Color Smooshy in Blue Lagoon), both from Interweave's "Favorite Socks", and then some basic 2x2 ribbed socks (Regia Jacquard Color in a denim-y colorway).















They all are part of last month trip to Farm Country to help out during my mother's post-surgical recovery. The Bearfoot socks were intended as my sanity project; I brought the last treasured skein of this, my favorite, sock yarn specifically for that. I had no idea what to expect, so naturally I expected the worst. Happily, things went well with her recovery. The Smooshy socks are from my foray to the LYS (such a friendly place!) near the physical therapist's. The self-stripers I made for my step dad for the rare occasion when he wears socks - he's a barefoot and Chaco sandals kind of guy.

Pleased as I am with the results - come on, how can one not be pleased with having more handknit socks?!!? - I'm getting a bit antsy with just doing small projects. In the last few months it's been almost all small stuff: socks, scarves and hats for a friend's shop, coffee cup cozies for a Breast Cancer Awareness Month fundraiser (I forgot to photograph them before I dropped them off - doh!).

I did make one sleeveless sweater on commission, but I don't count that as "mine". The pattern, color and yarn choices were all someone else's; my participation was merely in the execution of someone else's ideas. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against commissions. They just don't particularly scratch the creative itch.

I do have a top-down cardi parked on the needles for about two months now. I had this lovely lovely yarn in the stash (picked up on super sale a few years ago), and I made it into an assymetrical cardi first. HATED the end result, so rippity-rip, and started over. This one is based on a Marianne Isager design in her book "Stricken a la carte". I bought the book in Germany last summer; I don't think it's available in English yet. I suspected from the beginning that I might not have enough yarn, and I was right. Getting more wasn't a problem, other than the obvious one of the new yarn not matching the old. I know what I need to do - rip back a ways and alternate rows of old and new skeins - I just haven't been able to grit my teeth and go to it. It's bugged me so much that I don't even want to photograph the thing as a WIP until I get over that particular hump.

Not (quite) a dead blog and some general weirdness

Skipping over the details of the last few months is probably for the best; a quick summary should do.

After getting back from beach vacation in late spring, things got weird at Egg's work (precursor to all the recent economic/financial weirdness lately perhaps?). A month later I went back south because my snowbird mother was borderline incapacitated with lower back/hip/knee pain, and they needed help getting the things squared away for hurricane season and getting the sailboat back to FL. We dodged squalls all the way back and got pasted by a few really wicked ones, but in between I did manage a little sock knitting. The picture looks idyllic, but there was some weird juju out there the entire trip.

Home for July and most of August, then up the interstate to Farm Country for a month to take care of my mother following her hip replacement surgery. A bum hip had been causing all that pain, and the change post-surgery was nothing short of amazing.

Doggie got a farm vacation. Things that suburban dogs don't normally get to do, like digging,

rolling in (deer? muskrat? groundhog?) poop,

and interacting with big critters.

For entertainment I went to a few farm auctions, and I found treasure! That is, I'm sure this "thingy" (actually there are two of them) is something wonderful, once I figure out just what this weird contraption is.





















The auction bill said "antique yarn winder", but that doesn't seem right somehow. The Amish neighbors all had no idea, and even when one of them took me and my mystery object to visit a couple 90-something year old elders a little further away, no luck either. The consensus was that it looked very interesting, and they'd love to know what it finally turns out to be, whenever I do find out. The mystery continues for now...

Blog slacker still on island time (vacation report #1)

Here are a few excuses why I've not updated in almost a month:

• internet connectivity on vacation was spotty at best
• vacation photos require much editing of unhappy angles (meaning pasty white chubbiness)
• the dog required much attention and love after being abandoned at the gulag (boarding kennel) while Egg and I frolicked on the beach
• I went to Maryland Sheep & Wool three days after we got back from our island escape and am still recovering from fiber overload
• I've been in an extended post-vacation slump

So, time to get caught up! Let's start with ten days of salt water infused bliss...

We flew in and out of Daytona Beach using a small flight service that goes straight to the island, bypassing Nassau completely. I'm not a mega-resort and casino/nightclub action kind of girl, and the idea of being stuck on a cruise ship with multiple thousands of people is about as close to Hell as I can imagine, so that suits me just fine. Also great is skipping most of the post-9/11 air travel unpleasantries.

Our original plan was to go sailing with my step-dad, but a combination of his building timetable slipping a bit behind and a rash of scary brushfires in the area made us change plans. It just didn't seem like a good idea to leave their home site unattended for days on end.

We rented a place in Little Harbour, up the way from where my folks are building in Casuarina Point. As the seagull flies, it's only a couple miles; by road it's about 12 or so. Island geography is funny that way. We quickly got into vacation mode. (And dig that farmer's tan/sunburn thing on my arm!)

With generous coating of SPF45 I got back in touch with my salt water self. (BTW, when the label on the sunscreen says "May stain some fabrics", believe it. A couple T-shirts look like they have carrot juice spills in awkward places.) Mother Ocean was a little testy with me at first for having neglected her for the past three years, but she relented fairly quickly. My beach crawls were rewarded with lots of small treasures - beach glass is magic - and in the water I had small finny escorts. After one beach nap I woke up to see a ghost crab eying me as if weighing whether I was dead and worth a nibble; he moved on. Egg preferred a more sedentary and shady approach to relaxing, understandable with his burn-not-tan skin that no SPF can completely protect.

Partly because of the wild fires, partly because that's just the way it is down there, phone service was unreliable while we were there. For quick and easy communication with my folks down the way, we used the VHF radio (kinda like CB radio for boaters), and my call sign was "Wayward Daughter". Egg came up with it, and I thought it was perfect. Since the radio channels are open, there were probably a few boaters wondering where the hell this oddly named boat was.

Time flies...

Yep, Egg and I are looking at five years of wedded bliss. We tied the knot on the deck of a beachfront house on Abaco, one of the Out Islands of the Bahamas, after almost ten years of unwedded bliss. (Damn, we've been together a long time!) His mother had gotten tired of waiting for us to get married and had begun lobbying for grandchildren several years before, which we still haven't produced, but I digress...

So, we're off the the island again soon, and dear sweet "C" gave me this to protect my pastey-white, sun-deprived face from a wicked sunburn. She crocheted it in my favorite color, so sweet and thoughtful. Pardon the dorky, take-a-picture-of-myself-in-the-bathroom-mirror photo; I cropped it, but perhaps not enough. Isn't the hat just wonderful?!!?

Now, decision time: to bring knitting or not? Our original plan was going sailing with Captain Stepdad, which would have been not conducive to knitting. I'm prone to seasickness as it is - and no, I can't knit in the car either - so concentrated fiddling with sock yarn and size 1 needles would equal instant heaves. But plans have suddenly changed (too much backstory to go into why), we're going to be mostly shore-based, and I'm weighing how much of a nuisance it will be to shake sand out of anything I might bring. What impact does saltwater have on sock yarn? Oh, I know what I should bring: that lace shawl/stole I started back in 2001 (!!!), oddly enough with the intention of it being my "something blue", whenever we were to marry. Well, obviously I didn't finish it in time for that, but how about five years later? Hmm... Actually, it's just as well that I didn't finish it for the wedding, because I didn't even wear shoes, and an elegant lacy shawl would have looked out of place, and been hot as hell.

I finally got over myself and made the i-cord straps for the entrelac bag. Like most things that I procrastinate, it really didn't take THAT long... Into the washing machine with the bag and the straps tomorrow, and maybe I'll schlep it all damp to Knit Nite, unless the felting is a complete disaster.

Fiber dry spell

A combination of a wicked stomach flu and spring fever - mostly the flu - has severely limited my enthusiasm for yarn, or much of anything for that matter. I'll omit most of the scary details of the stomach virus, other than that I think I caught it from a dear old friend's one year old and that it knocked the hell out of me for longer than expected. (Could this little sweetie be the face of a germ carrier?!!?) Egg deserves kudos for being a kind, supportive husband during the first night and day of drama and the subsequent five days of whiny exhaustion.

The main current WIP is a shop model for the LYS, but progress is slow. Despite there being an abundance of stockinette stitch in it, my concentration just hasn't been sufficient for working on it for any length of time. I have started on the miles of i-cord handles (yawn) for the soon-to-be-felted entrelac bag; again, progress is slow. That one I really need to light a fire under, because the bag is supposed to go to Maryland Sheep and Wool with "T" and me in May. Come to think of it, if this fiber ennui keeps up, I will not have to worry about busting the budget there - good for Egg, bad for me.

Maybe a little informal knitting meet-up will get me back in the mood....

Serendipity

Egg linked me to an article about how it has been scientifically proven that men just don't get or utterly misinterpret non-verbal flirty signals from women. Does that really surprise anyone? Anyone female, that is? Then within an hour I stumbled across this delightful reply. (found on a random blog, originally from the PostSecret project)

I'm just not feeling very yarny the last few days since finishing the wavy socks. I ripped out the toe-up Monkey socks in the loud colorway of Wildfoote last night - the pattern completely disappeared into the riot of competing colors in the yarn. Anything beyond a simple rib is wasted there.

So, it's Knit Nite in a few hours at my LYS, and I have nothing on the needles. All my projects of late have been accessories or other little things (OK, so the entrelac bag isn't little), and I'm jonesing to do a garment again, just can't seem to find the right pattern. Sigh... Spring fever sucks.